


Deconstruction of a Man

by apparentlytaboo



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Blood and Gore, Sadness, Violence, Warnings: Character Death, Winter Soldier POV, even broken things can be beautiful, hurt without comfort, i am so sorry i should no write things while depressed but sometimes ideas just don's leave, soul marks, soul mates, soul mates are born with their lover's first words to them trope, warnings: broken mind of the Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-22 10:03:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22714294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparentlytaboo/pseuds/apparentlytaboo
Summary: In a world where soul mates are born with their lover's first words tattooed onto them...Men are still men. Wars are still waged. The invisible scars cut just as deeply as the visible, and not all endings are happy ones. Not even in fairy tales.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Deconstruction of a Man

He was born with a small mark on his wrist. Nothing fancy. Just three words. “Slow steady squeeze.”

As children of the time were wont to do, he’d had his share of youthful imaginings; playing out the possible circumstances that would lead to his strange little epithet. He wondered who this person might be. He longed for a future day where his soul would be grounded, knit tight to another, forever secure in the knowledge that he _belonged_. He was grateful for his words, however strange, blessing him with the bright possibility of his future. He was grateful to have words at all, when wonderful people like Stevie were born blank, cursed to grow worryingly old without any form of brand at all…

Then war came upon them like a vengeful wraith, closing the chapter on his youthful dreams and turning his future more violent than he ever could have imagined. Through the gloom of propaganda, rationing, the looming specter of the draft, he held onto hope. He remembered his words, traced them repetitively into his dreams at night. Slow steady squeeze.

When the draft manifested itself in reality, stealing friends and family members, sending letter too bland to match the dreadful import of its message, he clung to them like a lifeline. Slow steady squeeze.

He hung on for dear life through basic training, repeating them like a mantra, an endless prayer, to slow the vicious beating of his heart. Slow, he breathed in. Steady, he breathed out. Squeeze, his heart beats. He soldiered on.

The rifle range ripped his world asunder, the loud cracks and visceral violence the rounds promised were nothing, nothing, compared to the awful stutter-step of his heart, every time the coaches passed. They taught classes first, how to hold your weapon, to load, the rules, weapons safety, stock weld, eye relief. They taught them about the respiratory pause, to pull the trigger at the natural pause in your own breathing. And remember, they had said, do not jerk the trigger. Slow steady squeeze, every time.

Slow steady squeeze, they called out, patrolling the lines of infantry recruits laying prone in the muck.

Slow steady squeeze, they chanted to each other, themselves, beneath their breath.

An endless litany of words, blasphemous to his ears, each one carving out a new wound inside him. Not them, he thought. Not here. But the words never hit home the way they should.

Each time he heard them he held his breath, fell still, waited. But the burn of his connection failed to come.

Eventually they faded into the background. Slow steady squeeze, the muttered. His heart did not so much as squirm by the time they graduated. It felt like a lead weight, carved of stone but somehow still beating, carrying him forward into Europe.

There were battles, trenches, drawn out contests of will between himself and the enemy. Often, he found himself alone, elevated by skills at distance, perched in sniper hides. Waiting for the enemy to show itself. A glimpse of movement. The gleam of a scope in the still world. His sudden violence. Then the world would return to silence.

Then, there came a fall.

Years of snow and blood and pain and sleep so deep it felt like death. It passed in a blink and seemed to last forever. Handlers, trainers, one decade after the next. Medlennyy neuklonnyy vyzhimat.

The Winter Soldier had no words. They had been torn from him along with his flesh arm by callous hands.

Even if they had endured… there was nothing left of the man he’d been before. No hope, no dreams, no warmth. Nothing at all to offer anyone, aside from obedience; deadliness; efficiency.

There was little left that mattered to him at all. But he could appreciate a challenge. His current target was certainly providing one.

Bullets crossed with arrows in the air, his adversary no less competent for his archaic weaponry. On the contrary, the asset could hardly remember a time his heart had beat so violently, adrenaline buzzing in his veins as he chased a phantom through the abandoned city blocks.

An arrow landed in his thigh with a meaty thud, the pain a negligible annoyance as he sung himself hard into the shadow of a crumbling wall, taking aim and firing even as he falls and finally, finally, the round flies true.

The shadow in his crosshair’s twitches, falls behind the parapet and rips the arrow from his leg, presses gauze into the ragged hole and waits for any sign of movement. From here it is only a matter of time. Even if they are mobile, the best-case scenario for his adversary still leaves them bleeding a vivid trail through the snow. His prey is as good as caught. The soldier wraps a quick dressing around the wound, ties it tight to keep the gauze from squeezing out and steels himself for a long, drawn-out hike through the labyrinth of skeletal buildings.

But when he crests the high walkway from which his foe had loosed the last arrow, he finds the man lying still in the slush.

A bow shaped indent marks the place where his weapon fell, just out of reach, the hand splayed out towards it lays mangled in a pool of rusty snow. A lucky shot; the bullet struck the man’s bow-hand, traveling on to bury itself in his chest just below the collar bone. The loss of velocity from the initial impact would have caused the round to yaw, tumbling through the chest cavity and wreaking havoc wherever it went. The exit wound must be impressive: a large swatch of burgundy is growing out from beneath him, melting into the packed drift, the edges of the pool just starting to frost over. A fine spray of tiny crimson droplets fan out in a gory halo around the blond man’s head.

When the soldier approaches, he is surprised to find the man still breathing, albeit laboriously.

He stops just out of reach, too long the hunter not to be wary of a dying animal. Eyes the color of the winter sky snap open, surprisingly clear, the man somehow lucid despite the blood loss, the pain, the cold that’s no doubt robbed him of any feeling in his limbs. Silently, they regard each other in the still winter air.

A painful cough breaks their reverie, the man giving a jerky nod, the two fingers remaining on his broken hand crooking feebly, beckoning him forward. He is weaponless, his one free hand laying open in the snow. Two steps and he brings his rifle barrel squarely over the man’s heart. The uninjured hand twitches in the snow; slowly creeps over to wrap blue fingers around the flash suppressor.

Bewilderingly, the man smiles. It is small and wistful, full of something bittersweet he cannot quantify. The soldier flexes his grip, steadies the weapon in his shoulder, breathes in, out, draws his trigger finger smoothly inward at the pause.

Lips cracked from the cold form the man’s final words, dried blood flaking from the chapped surface. Though fate has him delivering them to his enemy, he is calm. Peaceful. His voice is rough with cold and disuse, barely louder than a whisper.

The rifle cracks loud, with a sound like the world splintering, echoing off of the jagged stones, fading into the soft snow.

Despite the cacophony, the soldier hears the words clear as day.

Slow steady squeeze.

He breathes in, out… a phantom fire burns up his metal arm, tendrils reaching up into his chest, licking the stone façade masquerading as his heart.

The soldier shakes the man’s fingers loose from his rifle, cleans the blood from the muzzle. He leaves the man staring into the mirror blue of the winter morning, the inferno in his soul burning up the scraps of a man left inside him until there’s truly nothing left.

The end.


End file.
